Weekend news wrap

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest our attention spans are dwindling as we spend more time in front of computers, tablets and smartphones. Microsoft has released a research report that says, “The average human attention span in 2000 was 12 seconds, but by 2013 it was only eight seconds (one second shorter than a goldfish!).”

Force Touch is the newest feature to have been added to Apple’s notebooks and it seems to be about to hit the 15in MacBook Pro. Some US retailers are listing the 15in MacBook Pro as ‘discontinued’ according to a report at AppleInsider.

9to5Mac is reporting Apple has doubled the total iCloud contact card limit to 50,000. The syncing limits of 25,000 calendars, 100 calendar and reminder lists, and 25,000 bookmarks remain unchanged.

Following in the footsteps of a past Apple ad, computer science student Alex King has found “new MacBook runs Windows 10 (a prerelease version, at that) better than it runs OS X”.

As Australia passes new data retention laws, the US has passed the USA Freedom Act, which would stop the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) bulk data collection of mobile phone communication data.